GetFeedback: Helping Brands Succeed In A Mobile-First World

While consumer mobile apps get tons of buzz, there is also a mobile-first megatrend in the enterprise space. And one company that is leading the charge is GetFeedback. It certainly helps that the founders are former executives at Salesforce.com.

In fact, today GetFeedback announced an integrated offering with Salesforce.com. It allows any company to create branded, mobile-ready customer surveys that can be distributed on smartphones, tablets and web browsers – with the responses automatically associated with CRM (customer relationship management) data.

So to get more background on GetFeedback, I recently had a chance to talk to the company’s CEO, Kraig Swensrud. Here’s what he had to say:

Tom Taulli: What makes your company unique, given that there are many survey products on the market?

Kraig Swensrud: In 2014, the rise of mobile computing is in full effect, and businesses are wondering how they should engage with their customers in a world of 1.5 billion smartphones. The consumers of today are conditioned to the great mobile experiences they have using modern apps like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or YouTube, and they have come to now expect great experiences with every interaction on their mobile devices.

Gathering feedback is essential for every company who wants to understand their customers. One can imagine how most customers feel when a company asks them for 10 minutes of their time to complete an online survey that looks like a Scantron from the ‘90s. Even worse, if that customer opens the survey on a mobile device – and currently 50% do – they end up pinching their fingers to view content on the small screen, trying to tap tiny little radio buttons, chasing content that flows off the side of the screen, and probably giving up at some point along the way.

Yet traditional online survey providers continue to create software that isn’t built for today’s world. As a result, customers resist engaging and companies miss the opportunity for feedback that can help them make critical business decisions. GetFeedback helps solve the survey engagement problem by delivering a great mobile experience that includes branding, imagery and even video. Because the content automatically renders perfectly on every form factor and device, companies report higher engagement levels and quality of customer input.

Taulli: What have you learned about building a mobile-first company?

Swensrud: The technology industry evolves significantly about every decade. We’ve moved from mainframes, to minicomputers, to PCs, to the Web, and now to Mobile. Surprisingly, it’s common for tech companies to stay rooted in the paradigms from which they are created. Just as mainframe companies suffered and were outpaced with the rise of the PC, desktop internet companies are now being threatened by companies that think mobile-first.

Having started our company in 2013, we’ve have had the benefit of making every product and design decision with a mobile-first perspective. By default, our product works on all of today’s smartphone, tablets, and web browsers. Building something from the ground up for the technology of today, not where it was yesterday, is the fast track to disrupting a stale industry.

English: iphone Deutsch: iphone (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Taulli: How did the experience at Salesforce help?

Swensrud: I first met Marc Benioff in 2006 after Salesforce acquired Kieden, a search marketing company that I co-founded with Sean Whiteley. Over the 6+ years that I worked at Salesforce, most recently as CMO, Marc became a mentor of mine. He is a great leader, and has demonstrated how to deliver and market software for a new generation of computing. I internalized the Salesforce ethos of putting the customer first, and enabling companies to connect and engage with their customers in a new way.

The speed at which mobile solutions became critical in the enterprise software space was surprising. Around 2010, I started hearing the same questions from thousands of different companies: Which technologies do I need in order to engage my customers on their smartphones and tablets? Which business apps do we have at our disposal to connect with them in this new way?

At that time it became apparent to us at Salesforce that we needed to reimagine our own technology for the mobile revolution, and that every single business software provider would need to do the same. That insight was part of what led me to start this company.

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